


Casualties

by CheerUpLovely



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death, Season/Series 04, s04e18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 10:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8529637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: In a twist of season 4, episode 18, the person that Oliver loses is far more catastrophic.No one's sure it's someone he can survive losing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous said: Hey, I thought something and i think you’re the perfect person to finish tearing my heart out!The prompt is: 4x18 goes differently and William dies instead of laurel (unrelated to arrow work though). Felicity comforts oliver through his toughest loss.

She’d known from the way John said her name that something terrible had happened. Two words. _It’s Oliver_. That had been all it had taken. She’d been up, pushing away the blanket that she’d covered her legs with after settling on the couch for a night in front of Netflix, and barely grabbed her coat in time before she was out the door. The television was still on, her computer was still powered up on the coffee table, but her key and her phone were in her hands and she wasn’t entirely sure she’d closed the front door behind her properly after she received John’s call.

Arriving at the bunker, John was the only one who greeted her. It already felt like it had been too long since she’d been down there, since telling Oliver after their fake wedding that it was too much for her, but for only one person to be down here was strange. Even when tensions were high between their team members, the bunker was almost full of life. Now, without the background chatter and movements, it felt alien and for the first time in years, she didn’t feel at home.

“How is he?” she asked, looking around for Oliver, the reason she’d been called.

Before she could walk further into the loft, John took her arm, preventing her from searching for him. “It’s bad.”

Her mind went to the worst possible place. Death. That was it. He was gone. Oliver was gone. She’d pushed him away and now she’d lost him forever. She wasn’t sure what ragged breaths were keeping her upright in that moment, but John’s grip tightened on her arm. “What happened?”

“Felicity…” he started, wiping his hand over his face, as if words were a struggle.

“John, what’s going on?” she demanded.

“There was a casualty.”

There. Unavoidable. Gone. Casualty. Dead. He was gone. She shook her head, stepping back from his grasp. Everything was falling away before her. Everything that she knew, everything familiar. It didn’t make sense, and yet it was unavoidable. The eerily quiet bunker was as still as it was because it’s primary resident was gone. She’d felt that same stillness before when she attended the funeral of Moira Queen, and been at the Queen household afterwards - again, looking for Oliver and not finding him.

“No. No, _no_ …”

And now he was gone. She’d never find him again.

“Things got out of control,” John explained. “No one saw it coming. We…we did everything we could. Oliver did everything he could.”

Oliver. _Oliver_ did… Oliver wasn’t dead.

His name rushed through, deep in her bones, to the point that all she could feel for a brief moment was a suffocating relief before it hit her that someone had still died, someone was gone, someone important, someone they clearly cared about, and she still needed a moment to be relieved that the man she had given herself to without return was not the one they would be burying.

“Who?” she asked after a moment had passed. “John, who died?”

“William.”

Oh.

 _Oh no_.

–

Oliver was sat against the wall beside the emergency cot they’d set up in the corner of the bunker. She approached him slowly after John had told him where he’d last left Oliver, how he’d fallen into silence after telling John he wanted to be alone. Now he sat with his legs drawn up before him, the leathers of his shadowed identity still clinging to him but soaked with blood. It only took a brief glance over him to assure herself that the blood wasn’t his, but that was an even more horrifying thought because by then, there was only one person who that blood could have belonged to.

She crouched down in front of him, picking up the hands that hung limply over his knees. The moment she touched him he flew to life, soulless eyes meeting hers as though he wasn’t sure he was seeing her. “Hey,” she whispered, stroking her thumb over the back of his hand.

He didn’t respond for the longest moment, didn’t move under her touch, but he kept his eyes on her. She thought this was what men might look like on the edge of a mirage, so desperate for the result but uncertain to believe. “Felicity?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she nodded.

Oliver swallowed thickly, his inhale shuddered as he gripped tightly on her hands. “He…”

She didn’t need him to say it, but watching him trying to find the words was heartbreaking. She hadn’t stayed to talk to John long enough to know how it had happened, but she could see just from the depths of Oliver’s eyes that it was horrific, and not just as a father watching his child die. “I know,” she assured him.

“You’re here,” he acknowledged, his hold on her fingers intensifying so much that it was almost painful, but she couldn’t ask him to let go. This was his lifeline.

“I’m right here,” she nodded, squeezing back as tightly as she could. “I’m not going anywhere.”

At that, Oliver dipped his head, resting his forehead against their clasped hands. She watched the shiver travel through his muscles before the moisture hit the back of her hand. “He…”

“Oliver…” she whispered when he gave up again.

“My little boy…” he half-whined, a dangerous choke in the back of his throat indicating that he was very close to spending far longer on a concrete floor than he had done when his mother had been killed.

Kneeling up, she tugged on his hands to try and get him to follow her. “Come on, hon. We need to get you cleaned up,” she told him.

He shook his head, his full collapsed weight nothing against her insistence. “No.”

“Oliver, look at me,” she encouraged. He did, at least, answer to that request, lifting his head to hers so that she could see the sheer emptiness of him .He had nothing left to give. “You can’t stay like this, okay? I need you to come with me.”

“Felicity…”

“Come with me,” she repeated, until his weight loosened against her arm and he started to move with her.

She managed to lead him over to a chair closer to their medical supplies. He sank into it without question, alternating between watching her with a shattered intensity and staring into a space that held only fractured memories of a boy that was no longer a part of his life, and never could be. She treated him with the same gentleness she always had, wiping a damp cloth over his face until the blood was gone, making sure his hands and neck were free from the crimson stains as well until she could set it aside. “There, all clean,” she declared with a whisper, cupping her hands to his cheeks.

He leaned into the palms of her hands for just a moment until his arms were moving, wrapping around her middle and drawing her between his legs with a muscle memory that hadn’t faded and most likely never would. She let him bury his face into her stomach, moving her palms to the back of his head where one hand scratched lightly through his hair and the other soothed at the base of his neck.

“He’s gone,” Oliver choked out before the defeated sobs shuddered through him. As he broke, she held him together, clutching him against her the same way she had when he woke from nightmares that Nanda Parbat had scarred him with.

It was a painful thing, to watch someone she loved with such intensity go through something so excruciating and unnecessary. He’d lost his father, his mother, his best friend, countless friends… oh, he’d buried so many people he’d held close to his heart but his son? The little boy who had only just come into his life?

The son he’d sent away so that he would be safe…

“Oliver, I’m _so_ sorry,” she murmured shakily into the top of his head, bending so that she could close as much of this cruel world away from him as possible.

“My heart hurts,” he groaned into her torso, and yes, she could hear it. She could feel him breaking within her, feeling him giving up in a way that he never had done before, and it frightened her. So few parents come back from losing a child. And Oliver who had already lost so much…

He cried against her without any recognition of the others in the room. Everything that was left of him narrowed into the small space they occupied, but Felicity felt others joining them. She could hear the soft crying that Thea let loose for the nephew she’d never been introduced to properly, turning her head slightly to see her younger friend hidden against Laurel’s shoulder. John was nearby, his arms folded with his head hung. It was… empty.

She wasn’t sure how long had passed before John approached them, sliding a gentle hand over her shoulder as he whispered to her. Oliver had fallen silent some time ago, but his hold on her hadn’t loosened any. “He shouldn’t stay here,” John told her, casting a glance to the sleeping area they’d set up as an emergency. “Not tonight.”

“Where is he-?”

“He’s been staying at mine,” he told her. “I’ll take him home.”

“I’m coming,” she murmured without a second thought.

“Felicity…” he replied in an argument he didn’t dare to voice, because in that moment nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that she walked away. It didn’t matter that she gave him back his ring (twice). It didn’t matter that she told him she couldn’t be with him because in that moment the only place she knew with absolute certainty that she needed to be was at his side.

“I’m not leaving him,” she told him with conviction.

–

The next week was excruciating.

The first night back at the Diggle household was a level of pain she associated with the words _‘the surgery wasn’t successful’_ and that was a level of agony she didn’t think she’d ever endure again. It was harder to endure it by watching someone else suffer it. She couldn’t take his pain away no matter how much she wanted to, because it was a pain she can’t imagine. Oliver lost his son. His son was murdered before him. His son died in his arms. Even if she could take that pain away from him, she wasn’t sure it was something she had the strength to ensure herself.

For days he didn’t sleep. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move.

The guest room became his solitude. He lay on the bed without thought to Felicity who stayed at his side. He moved when she encouraged him to shower, to drink, to brush his teeth - menial tasks that he didn’t need to think about. Other than that, he remained still, lost in the devastation of his own mind. The only time he seemed to acknowledge that anyone was with him was when he reached for her as the sun went down and crushed himself against her whenever Sara woke up crying in the night.

The first time he showed a real sign of life was the morning of William’s funeral.

She went into the bedroom to make sure he’d at least attempted to get out of bed, only to find him fully clothed, packing his things into the one bag he’d brought to the Diggle’s house in the first place a few weeks earlier. He still hadn’t shaved, and she suspected he hadn’t showered, but he seemed rather intent on his task.

“Oliver?” she questioned, closing the door behind her.

He snapped up as though frightened, before it slipped into the expression she’d seen countless times before when she’d caught him on the edge of an escape. He’d been caught, and he had no other explanation for what he was doing. He was running and they both knew it. “I…I thought you’d have gone already,” he murmured weakly. It was the most she’d heard his voice since the first night she’d come to his side.

“What are you doing?” she asked, taking a step closer towards him.

With no chance of lying, he looked down at his bag. “Packing.”

“To go where?” she asked him.

This time he was quiet, doing up the zip on his bag with far too much force. “I can’t do this.”

“Oliver…”

“I _can’t_ ,” he decided with a firm shaking of his head. “I can’t _bury_ him. I _won’t_.”

Felicity knew that arguing with a stubborn Oliver was one of the most difficult and frustrating tasks she could dare to undertake, but she also knew that there was not a chance in any circle of hell that she was letting him leave right now. She wanted to tell him that it was the right thing to do, but deep down her reasons were personal, and it was her determination that had her pushing towards him, putting her hand on his as if it might anchor him to her.

“Oliver, you can’t run away from this,” she told him with a desperation circling her tone. “Don’t leave us..”

He kept his focus on the bag in his hands, not moving an inch until she saw his entire form flex with the need to flee. “The team can go on for a while without me,” he decided flatly.

The team. Of course, the team could. By now there were failsafes in place that should anything happen to any one of them, they could remain a functional team. It was something they’d needed to look into once they came back from Ivy Town and saw how the team was continuing in their absence. Yes, she knew they could survive Oliver leaving again.

“No, not the team,” she told him, taking a step backwards from him and removing her hand, letting it fall in front of her.

He sighed, turning to her slightly. “Felicity…”

“Don’t leave _us_.”

When he finally faced her, she watched as everything started to sink in for him when he spotted her hand resting over her lower stomach. He was a smart man, after all, and it didn’t take him long to figure out what she was really saying by _us_. _Us_ was not a team of vigilantes. _Us_ was not even a group of friends that were close enough to be family.

 _Us_ was the three of them. The two of them and the unborn child that lay nestled in her womb.

“ _Oh_ …” he whispered, managing to fit three wavers into his tone in one syllable. Maybe it was the shock, or maybe it was because he hadn’t eaten in who knew how long, but she saw the tremor in his hand and took it in her own, bringing it to her still-flat stomach to ground him before he fell to the ground.

“I know this isn’t the right time to tell you but I can’t just let you leave without you knowing,” she whispered.

Because he would go. She knew that. There was far too much evidence to prove to him that this was no longer a city he belonged in. He’d fled these streets once before, with her at his side, and she didn’t doubt that he’d do it again now that his son was another casualty, it was just a matter of how long she could keep him there for. He wouldn’t be going alone, if that were the case.

She couldn’t see the storm of his watery eyes until he lifted his head from gazing down at her stomach. For the longest time his only recognition of what she’d told him was the singular gentle swipe of his thumb over her shirt. She gave him the time he needed, waiting for that deep, steadying inhale that seemed not to have the effect she hoped it might have.

"i know this is a good thing, but I don’t know how to process it right now,” he spoke eventually, a raw quality in his voice that told her he had understood, that he knew he was going to be a father, but that he couldn’t let himself be happy about it when his firstborn was about to go to his grave.

“I know,” she nodded. “But you can’t abandon us.”

That time, she knew that he was listening when she said he couldn’t leave. He’d been robbed of far too much time with William. He’d missed all the important moments of his life and he would never get an opportunity to deepen the connection they’d only briefly started to experience as father and son. She didn’t have to be part of his life like she had been as his fiancee to know how bady he wanted to be a good father to him, and she knew Oliver well enough to know that he wouldn’t let himself miss a second of this child - their child - as long as he could stand it.

“Come with me,” he said simply.

“Where?” she asked, the echoes of I’d go anywhere with you unspoken but screamed between them.

“Anywhere. Just not here,” he decided. “Bad things happen to my family here.”

Felicity’s hand came up to his cheek, letting him rest his weight against her palm as they slowly started to sink together again. “Oliver…”

“Please,” he whispered. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.” The fact that it was about the two of them now - both her and the baby - she didn’t need him to say that out loud. She knew what she meant, and that was enough.

Her thumb stroked across his cheekbone. “I will come with you, but we have to go to the funeral first,” she compromised.

At that he started to pull away again, shaking his head and lowering his eyes. “ _Please_ …” he murmured, his hands immediately reaching for the packed bag again until she intervened, taking both his hands in her own and tugging his attention back to her. One of the advantages of being shorter than him was that when he tried to turn his attention downwards to avoid something, she was always right there in his line of sight.

“I know it’s going to be hard, but it’s something that you have to do,” she told him. “All of this today isn’t about you, it’s about him. It’s about _William_ , and everyone who loved him coming together to say goodbye to him.”

But again he shook his head, slamming his eyes closed. “I don’t want to say goodbye to him. I only just found him.” She could hear it in his tone as she cupped his cheeks again, that he was about to break, that days of silent agony was about to burst into something far more soul-destroying than he could handle.

“I know,” she murmured. But she didn’t know, not really. She knew that nothing she had experienced could come close to what he was expected to do today. He was going to have to carry a coffin containing the body of his little boy, and he would have to continue living after that moment had passed. She thought that would be the hardest thing of all; that when the funeral was over he’d have to carry on living in the same cruel world that took his son from him. She’d only known that she would soon be a mother for a few weeks and already the thought of anything happening to their unborn child was unbearable. She could scarcely imagine the pain of losing a child that had been allowed to live and laugh and be loved. _So_ , so loved.

“I loved him,” he choked out, turning his face to the side and burying himself into her palm as much as he could. She could feel the tears falling against her skin, a few droplets of pain ripping from him before he was taking heaving breaths to steady himself.

“I wish you’d had more time with him,” she found herself whispering, wanting to reach up and pull him far enough into her embrace that he never need surface again.

They remained that way for some time, long enough that she briefly forgot all about the car service waiting downstairs for them, or that they were already late.

“Bali,” he said eventually, his hands dropping back to her stomach as he righted himself.

“What about Bali?” she asked him.

“I want to go there, with you,” he said.

She didn’t need to think about it, just a simple nod. “Okay, Bali.”

With another breath, she watched control slip back into his gaze. “I want to be excited about my– _our_ baby,” he said.

“We have a while longer to get excited,” she assured him. “Today isn’t about the baby, okay? Let today be about your son. You have to get through this first, but you are not alone.”

A week later, the two of them set out for Bali. One of the more important items that came with them on their one way trip was the container in Oliver’s hand luggage that contained a small part of his son that Samantha had given to him to do with what he wished, half of William’s ashes for him to pay his own respects to.

William came with them to Bali, to the same beach where he had first decided that he felt a sense of peace in his life, when he could first see himself really having a life outside of the Arrow that never involved going back. In the place where Oliver Queen first felt a sense of peace, he laid a piece of his son to rest, scattering the handful of ashes into the gentle waves as the sun went down.

There was a time for life and a time for death. Soon it would be the time for them to feel the excitement of their first child together, to pay attention to the curve of her stomach growing with each day until their daughter was a living breathing presence in their lives. But first had to come the grief of William, who would always be a known presence in their child’s life.


End file.
